Listening to Glenn Beck yesterday. He was saying to his audience, hey listen folks, if we're serious abt drastically dialing back government, we've got to bump up charity a lot: there are real needs out there. Admirable, and certainly not the full-on Ayn Rand line. My concern abt leaving everything to private charity is the likely unevenness--your chances of relief may depend on your living close to, or coming to the attention of, someone who is both sympathetic to your plight and has the means to give you succor. Or then if we go to large institutional charities like the United Way, things begin to look quasi-governmental. And your contributions begin to feel a bit like taxation without representation--I'm sure most of you at one time or another have had your arm twisted by an employer for "100% participation." I'm having trouble purging all vestiges of liberal concern for equality and economic justice from my thinking.

A FANTASIA ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

1.

Well, you could just go with the right of anyone to own and carry guns can not be abridged.  You could regard the part about the purpose of the amendment being to provide for the maintenance of a militia as an aside that has no effect on the actual injunctive part of the amendment.


2.

Arms, what does arms mean?  Probably it was meant to mostly refer to guns, they being more likely to be proscribed than other things such as sabers, dirks, slings, or spears that may be regarded as arms. How about hand grenades?  On the other end, should the meaning of arms extend to armaments not carried and operated by just one person.  Mortars?  Machine guns on tripods, catapaults, Greek fire, howitzers?  Could you mount a cannon in your attic window?



3.

Has the NRA noticed that the amendment doesn't actually refer specifically to guns, let alone to rifled weapons?  I think I recall that rifles did exist at that time, but were specialty weapons for sharpshooters.  In any case, I feel pretty confidant in thinking that to Americans of the time reading the amendment what would have come most readily to mind is a smooth bore long gun.  Should we limit the scope of the amendment to the actual devices the framers thought they were referring to?  Or should we update it to include the armaments of today?  What would the framers have thought about Uzi's in the closet or extended-clip pistols under the bed?  Does it matter?



4.

A need for personal defense is most often cited as the reason to have a gun.  Yet in a sudden, unanticipated confrontation with a robber or burglar, 18th century firearms would be of little use.  A modern pistol can be whipped out of a coat pocket ready to fire.  But a muzzle-loading flintlock?  So a right to this kind of personal defense is unlikely what the amendment was meant to confer.  But again, does it matter?  If you have an unalloyed right to arm yourself,  does it matter that advancing technology makes that right even more useful?



5.

Let's say that the part of the amendment about a militia is not just an offhand comment.  For one thing, the terminology "bear arms" sounds much more natural in this context.  Unless 18th century usage was considerably different, it's an odd way to refer to an individual's right to carry a gun.  The National Guard is usually considered to be the nearest modern equivalent to the 18th century militia.  And in the past, I believe, that there have been some court decisions to the effect that having weapons in a state's National Guard armory satisfied the requirement that the people not be prevented from bearing arms.  More recently, the Supreme Court has interpreted the right more as an individual one.  But there are still those who think that the militia wording significantly affects the overall meaning of the amendment, Justice Breyer, for example.  Anyway,  getting back to "militia" as actually having some force:  From this viewpoint, the weapon most privileged by the right to bear would be the M16 or M4, that is, the military-style long gun carried by troops most likely to see combat.   And then other weapons might be seen as in the penumbra of the right, like sidearms, maybe--the military issues hand guns to those who aren't expected to have to use them much.  And other kinds of weapons might be seen as completely outside the right, like mustard gas or anthrax.



6.

After personal defense, the reason most cited for the right to bear arms is to allow citizens the means to fight the tyranny of the state, the federal government being seen as the most likely transgressor.  Or, alternatively, to equip an army of irregulars fighting a foreign invader.  Of course, we know from the news what weapons would be needed in these situations:  rocket-propelled grenades, IEDs, and AK47s.  And for effective exercise of the right to bear we ought to be able to keep these arms at home or in secret ordnance dumps.



7.

None of these musings say anything about whether individuals having guns or the state having restrictive gun laws is a good idea or not.  What we think about those questions is separable from what we decide is the most accurate interpretation of the constitution.  Most of us seem to conveniently interpret the constitution to allow whatever we like and to proscribe whatever we don't like.  For example, many on the liberal side concede that one ought to have a right to guns for hunting and self-defense, but draw the line at military-style weapons.  But if the "militia" part of the first amendment has any meaning at, how can we ban weapons of the kind a militia might use?  And if you add to that logic the interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, voila! you have automatic weapons in every closet.  (The AR-15, btw, is not an automatic weapon, not an "assault rifle."  It's semi-automatic like most of the pistols American own:  one trigger-pull = one bullet.)

If there is but one true vision of the world and how to live in it, then, there being a multiplicity of such systems, the one you are born into is most likely to be false.

OUR WORLD COMES WITH US

Setting out daily
on new roads that to nothing
crumble before I arrive,

leaving me in trackless waste
or lost in pathless forest.